Jake Auerbach: Lucian Freud Portraits
The film is made together with Freud’s biographer Willam Feaver, who voice-off introduces the method of the film up-front: We will go to the people he has portrayed to get an idea of who this genius artist is – the film was made in 2004, Freud died in 2011. And what you get as a viewer is a wonderful range of talking faces, who remember how it was to sit for Freud. And to sit for Freud was ”a hell of a commitment” as one of the models say, for hours and over a period of months or a year. ”You were never allowed to see the progress”, says another, but you were treated well by the painter while in his studio.
The models (aristocrats, publicly known characters, women, many women, his daughters (some of them…), grandchildren) talk about him and about the experience to be painted, they are given time, and you are invited to watch the paintings, also there you are given time. The paintings, the interpretations that Freud made of faces, nude bodies on a couch, or new versions of known paintings by Watteau or Cézanne. It is entertaining and you get a sense of an artist who is giving all of himself in his self-portraits. A charismatic man, dishy, as one model says, and a man who in his old age started to care about his family. A tremendous gambler, a man who could catch the ”subtle differences” in a face, as says colleague David Hockney, who sat for him as well.
Watched it on the SVT art documentary slot K-Special. Available through Amazon or hire it for 7 days via the producer, see below. An article by Feaver in Guardian is also linked.
UK, 52 mins., 2004
http://www.jakeauerbachfilms.com/lucian-freud-portraits
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/feb/02/lucian-freud-artist
